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3. What discourses of British Heritages and Indigenous Australians are legitimised in
official education syllabus documents, texts and curriculum support materials?
1.7 Structure of Dissertation
This dissertation is structured as eight chapters, each contributing to develop the discussion
surrounding the central research problem and research questions. Subsequent to the concerns
detailed in this chapter, an overview of the following chapters’ specific content is
summarised as follows:
Chapter Two: Literature Review, locates the research conducted within this dissertation with
the published literature in the field of history and education. This chapter contains five
sections that provide the conceptual focus of this project, including: official knowledge as
encapsulated by Apple (1993, 2000); defining textbooks, including their use as a pedagogical
device, especially to maintain ideological dominance; hegemony, dominant discourses and
resistant discourses relevant to this project; constructions of national identity through school
curriculum; and curriculum approaches in Humanities disciplines.
Chapter Three: Methodology, Research Design and Conduct presents an in-depth discussion
of the methodological approach that guided the research, data collection, analysis and
reporting of findings. Specifically, this includes an articulation of how bricolage is deployed
and how a variety of methodological and theoretical approaches guide this approach
including: CDA, visual analysis techniques, historical methodologies, disclosure of
researcher, and ideological assumptions underpinning the project such as Gramsci’s (1957,
1971; Forgacs, 1988) and Althusser’s (1971, 1984) understandings of hegemony. It also
includes a practical explanation of the enactment of the methodology to the data selection,
analysis and reporting of findings through five distinct stages. In particular, the specific CDA
approach taken to data analysis is detailed. Importantly, this chapter also sets out the explicit
criteria used to select school curriculum materials for analysis; and the strategies undertaken
to collect this data.
Chapter 4: Data Analysis Introduction frames the data analysis reported in chapters 5, 6, and
7—providing an historical and situated reading of the background to the analysis within a
Queensland specific context.
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